What is the issue?
Depression is frequently experienced by people treated with dialysis. Dialysis patients consider treatments that help with depression to be a high priority. Despite that fact that psychosocial interventions have been shown to decrease depression in various chronic diseases, we are very uncertain about whether treatments prevent or treat depression for dialysis patients as studies are rare.
What did we do?
This evidence is current to June 2019. We searched the medical literature and identified 33 studies with 2056 participants treated by dialysis. Studies evaluated a range of possible treatments including acupressure, cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), counselling, education, exercise, meditation, motivational interviewing, relaxation techniques, social activity, spiritual practices, support groups, telephone support, visualisation, and voice control compared to usual care or other psychosocial treatments. We also checked the quality of the information in the studies to learn how certain we could be about the results.
What did we find?
We are moderately certain that CBT, exercise, and relaxation techniques probably decrease symptoms of depression for patients treated with long-term dialysis. Counselling may slightly decrease depression symptoms, while we are uncertain whether acupressure, telephone support, or meditation make any difference. We found moderate certainty evidence that CBT provides higher quality of life for dialysis patients. Studies did not measure effects of psychosocial treatments on major depression, suicide risk, and whether therapies made any difference to anxiety, hospital admissions, or withdrawal from dialysis treated is uncertain. Adverse events from treatment is very uncertain.
Some study authors did not report the methods for their studies clearly, so we could not be certain whether patients truly had a random chance of being in each treatment group or whether the trial results were assessed by people knowing which treatments that patients actually received. For most outcomes, we identified very few studies, which decreased our confidence in the results.
Conclusions
CBT, exercise, and relaxation techniques probably decrease depressive symptoms for dialysis patients while CBT also improves life quality. Counselling may slightly reduce depression among those receiving dialysis. We are not certain whether interventions prevent or treat major depression, anxiety, suicide risk, or withdrawal from dialysis care before death or whether psychological and social treatments have adverse effects.
Cognitive behavioural therapy, exercise or relaxation techniques probably reduce depressive symptoms (moderate-certainty evidence) for adults with ESKD treated with dialysis. Cognitive behavioural therapy probably increases health-related quality of life. Evidence for spiritual practices, acupressure, telephone support, and meditation is of low certainty . Similarly, evidence for effects of psychosocial interventions on suicide risk, major depression, hospitalisation, withdrawal from dialysis, and adverse events is of low or very low certainty.
People with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) treated with dialysis are frequently affected by major depression. Dialysis patients have prioritised depression as a critically important clinical outcome in nephrology trials. Psychological and social support are potential treatments for depression, although a Cochrane review in 2005 identified zero eligible studies. This is an update of the Cochrane review first published in 2005.
To assess the effect of using psychosocial interventions versus usual care or a second psychosocial intervention for preventing and treating depression in patients with ESKD treated with dialysis.
We searched Cochrane Kidney and Transplant's Register of Studies up to 21 June 2019 through contact with the Information Specialist using search terms relevant to this review. Studies in the Register are identified through searches of CENTRAL, MEDLINE, and EMBASE, conference proceedings, the International Clinical Trials Register (ICTRP) Search Portal and ClinicalTrials.gov.
We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi-RCTs of psychosocial interventions for prevention and treatment of depression among adults treated with long-term dialysis. We assessed effects of interventions on changes in mental state (depression, anxiety, cognition), suicide, health-related quality of life (HRQoL), withdrawal from dialysis treatment, withdrawal from intervention, death (any cause), hospitalisation and adverse events.
Two authors independently selected studies for inclusion and extracted study data. We applied the Cochrane 'Risk of Bias' tool and used the GRADE process to assess evidence certainty. We estimated treatment effects using random-effects meta-analysis. Results for continuous outcomes were expressed as a mean difference (MD) or as a standardised mean difference (SMD) when investigators used different scales. Dichotomous outcomes were expressed as risk ratios. All estimates were reported together with 95% confidence intervals (CI).
We included 33 studies enrolling 2056 participants. Twenty-six new studies were added to this 2019 update. Seven studies originally excluded from the 2005 review were included as they met the updated review eligibility criteria, which have been expanded to include RCTs in which participants did not meet criteria for depression as an inclusion criterion.
Psychosocial interventions included acupressure, cognitive-behavioural therapy, counselling, education, exercise, meditation, motivational interviewing, relaxation techniques, social activity, spiritual practices, support groups, telephone support, visualisation, and voice-recording of a psychological intervention.
The duration of study follow-up ranged between three weeks and one year. Studies included between nine and 235 participants. The mean study age ranged between 36.1 and 73.9 years.
Random sequence generation and allocation concealment were at low risk of bias in eight and one studies respectively. One study reported low risk methods for blinding of participants and investigators, and outcome assessment was blinded in seven studies. Twelve studies were at low risk of attrition bias, eight studies were at low risk of selective reporting bias, and 21 studies were at low risk of other potential sources of bias.
Cognitive behavioural therapy probably improves depressive symptoms measured using the Beck Depression Inventory (4 studies, 230 participants: MD -6.10, 95% CI -8.63 to -3.57), based on moderate certainty evidence. Cognitive behavioural therapy compared to usual care probably improves HRQoL measured either with the Kidney Disease Quality of Life Instrument Short Form or the Quality of Life Scale, with a 0.5 standardised mean difference representing a moderate effect size (4 studies, 230 participants: SMD 0.51, 95% CI 0.19 to 0.83) , based on moderate certainty evidence. Cognitive behavioural therapy may reduce major depression symptoms (one study) and anxiety, and increase self-efficacy (one study). Cognitive behavioural therapy studies did not report hospitalisation.
We found low-certainty evidence that counselling may slightly reduce depressive symptoms measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (3 studies, 99 participants: MD -3.84, 95% CI -6.14 to -1.53) compared to usual care. Counselling reported no difference in HRQoL (one study). Counselling studies did not measure risk of major depression, suicide, or hospitalisation.
Exercise may reduce or prevent major depression (3 studies, 108 participants: RR 0.47, 95% CI 0.27 to 0.81), depression of any severity (3 studies, 108 participants: RR 0.69, 95% CI 0.54 to 0.87) and improve HRQoL measured with Quality of Life Index score (2 studies, 64 participants: MD 3.06, 95% CI 2.29 to 3.83) compared to usual care with low certainty. With moderate certainty, exercise probably improves depression symptoms measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (3 studies, 108 participants: MD -7.61, 95% CI -9.59 to -5.63). Exercise may reduce anxiety (one study). No exercise studies measured suicide risk or withdrawal from dialysis.
We found moderate-certainty evidence that relaxation techniques probably reduce depressive symptoms measured with the Beck Depression Inventory (2 studies, 122 participants: MD -5.77, 95% CI -8.76 to -2.78). Relaxation techniques reported no difference in HRQoL (one study). Relaxation studies did not measure risk of major depression or suicide.
Spiritual practices have uncertain effects on depressive symptoms measured either with the Beck Depression Inventory or the Brief Symptom Inventory (2 studies, 116 participants: SMD -1.00, 95% CI -3.52 to 1.53; very low certainty evidence). No differences between spiritual practices and usual care were reported on anxiety (one study), and HRQoL (one study). No study of spiritual practices evaluated effects on suicide risk, withdrawal from dialysis or hospitalisation.
There were few or no data on acupressure, telephone support, meditation and adverse events related to psychosocial interventions.